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A pharmacy chain in Sweden has started running a trial across its locations with a simple aim: can a few minutes a day of free time help reduce loneliness?
Sweden’s government recently commissioned a large social study about loneliness across its citizenry, and what it found made for heavy reading. 8% of adults don’t have a single close friend.
The major Swedish pharmacy chain Apotek Hjärtat is allowing its workers to have 15 minutes per day, or 1 hour per month, to walk away from the register, the counter, or the shelves, and make a phone call, plan an event, step out to meet someone in person, or just have a chat with co-workers.
Any activity that promotes friendship and friend-making is permitted under the “Friend Care” policy; the company will even give you $100 a year for the purpose.
Monica Magnusson, Apotek Hjärtat’s CEO, told the BBC that the idea for the Friend Care trial came following another initiative that trained pharmacists to recognize loneliness among its clientele.
It invited its staff to ask something out of a series of questions designed to help people, particularly seniors and others who might suffer from social isolation, to come out of their shell.
The idea got Magnusson thinking about whether the company was doing enough along the same lines for its own people.
Yasmine Lindberg is one of Apotek Hjärtat’s employees that the BBC spoke to for its report on the initiative, and she said she often feels lonely since separating from her partner 4 years earlier. Though her teenage kids live with her every other week, she often arrives home from work too tired to go out or make plans with friends.
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Lindberg said the 15 minutes have made a big difference to her, as they’ve proved the kick up the backside she needed to make plans and put herself out there more often, something that Daniel Ek, a Swedish psychologist, told the BBC is something the country struggles with.
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“The Swedish mentality is like, you shouldn’t disturb others. We value personal space a lot, and we have a hard time breaking the ice,” he told the BBC.
Many Swedish businesses give their employees something called a “friskvård” which can be a compensatory benefit related to wellness activities like fitness courses or massages. Apotek Hjärtat called their Friend Care benefit a “vänvård” in a play-on-words.
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